Tuesday, 6 January 2015

eCigarettes 2015: To December And Beyond

It's been a long time since I wrote a new blog (on here at least), so I
thought it might be time to put that right by reflecting on events
that happened over the Christmas and New Year period, and on what 2015 might
bring.

As with most people, the Christmas/New Year period was spent making merry
and consuming copious amounts of food and alcohol. The Public Health nut-jobs
must really dread this time of year, seeing people actually going out and
enjoying themselves for once. The economy gets a massive boost as we all go out
and buy frivolous things as presents for people who will probably never use
them. We buy far too much food (a large part of which ends up going to waste),
enough alcohol to keep a pub going for a week, and of course quite a few people
will having 'embarassing' moments to try and forget as a result of having consumed just
a little more alcohol than they intended at their works do.

The pubs and restaurants did a booming trade catering for Christmas parties
and of course the pubs themselves were full for almost the entire period as
customers were finally able to let their hair down and stick two fingers up at
the Public Health zealots. It was certainly a time to make merry and forget
about any troubles we may have. Mercifully, the period also shut those Public
Health zealots up (for the most part).

Cue the New Year however, and the inevitable 'Stop Smoking' campaigns
started in earnest in a fanfare on Breakfast TV and the news. You can tell how
orchestrated it all was by the supposed 'big names' that were all wheeled out to
speak on the subject.

As an ex-smoker myself, I always detested this kind of nannying and
cajoling. At the end of the day, people who choose to smoke know of the risks
and no amount of campaigns is going to make an iota of difference to them. But
Public Health need to justify the obscene amount of public money it receives
each year and I guess they think that such campaigns show that they are doing something.
It's about time that cuts in public money was brought down on these people as
they serve no purpose other than their own ideological and puritanical
interests.

People are opening their eyes and seeing through the Nanny state. Their days
are numbered. The three main political parties are in panic-mode to stop the electorate
moving to ‘alternative’ parties with their votes. Labour in particular are
worried about this as the general public shows increasing signs of tiring of
their nannying ways.

Which brings us nicely on to where 2015 might take us.

Two immediate areas of concern are the ongoing Public Health Consultations
in Wales and Scotland. The Scottish Consultation has only just completed (2nd
January), but the Welsh one ran its course during the second half of 2014.
In Wales, Labour are beginning to wake up to the reality that the general public
are fed up of the constant intrusions into their personal lives. There has been
strong opposition to the proposal to ban eCigarettes from enclosed public
spaces. The Welsh Petition drummed up considerable support both from the vaping
public and from opposition AM’s.

However, a lesson learned during the Welsh Consultation is how the people attempting
to impose such bans ‘cherry-pick’ the responses. The fact that the majority of
public responses were in opposition to the proposals seemed to bear no weight
in the eyes of the Health Minister, who bullishly pushed on stating that most
of the public bodies were in agreement with his proposals. He neatly avoided
noting that both the Royal College of Physicians and ASH opposed his proposals.
Furthermore, he accused the general public of being part of an orchestrated campaign
due to the fact that many of the responses were from template letters. The fact
that the responses from many of the public bodies (especially the NHS Trusts)
were also almost word for word identical to each other is, in his eyes,
by-the-by.

The Health Minister needs a strong reminder that public bodies such as the
NHS Trusts and the BMA do NOT vote him into office. We, the general public, do
that and he ignores us at his peril. Elected officials are elected to serve the
public, not puritanical societies like the BMA. This is something I fully
intend to remind the Health Minister of when he finally comes face to face with
me in the coming year.

The Scottish opposition to a ban on vaping in enclosed spaces would do well
to learn this lesson. They must not allow the politicians to run roughshod over
the electorate and ignore their wishes. The SNP gained significant support
during the Independence campaign, but if they think they can sit back and rely
on that support continuing whilst they try to interfere in the private lives
of their citizens then they will be in for shock. The upcoming General Election
may go a long way in reminding them of this fact when May arrives. It is
easier to LOSE support than it is to gain it.

2015 is also the year when the TPD will finally be challenged in the
European Court. It is being challenged on several fronts. The Tobacco Industry
were the first to launch a legal challenge, quickly followed by an actual
Nation – Poland. Toward the end of the year, Totally Wicked also launched their
legal action and were given permission to take their case to the European
Court. I have heard rumours that other vendors are also about to launch legal
challenges of their own. But as those are unsubstantiated rumours (to the best
of my knowledge) at present, I will not be naming any further names in this
blog.

I am confident that at least one of those challenges will be successfully (and
reasonably confident that all of them will be successful). My big hope is that
the legal challenges will expose the cloak-and-dagger negotiations that went on
behind the scenes in the European Parliament when the TPD was forced through and that we will also learn just
who was lobbying whom. I am pretty certain that more than a few skeletons might
be exposed from the closets were this to happen.

Of course, any successful legal challenge to the TPD will have an inevitable
knock-on effect to the proposals in both Wales and Scotland that the
prohibitionists are trying to push through. For this reason, I feel the first 6
months of 2015 is going to be the most significant period.

On other fronts, science and evidence is beginning to show its teeth in the
ongoing propaganda war being waged by the likes of McKee, Chapman, Glantz, the
WHO and the BMA. Constantly being faced with real scientific evidence from the true
scientists, the ANTZ are increasingly tripping themselves up and they desperately
strive for new angles to undermine vaping and put their own evidence-less, puritanical
viewpoints over. I find it interesting that each time new scare stories appear in
the news, non-vapers are now also questioning what they are hearing. As stated
above, people are starting to push back on the ever increasing intrusions into
their private lives by these people. They are starting to see where the path is
inexorably leading us and they don’t like what they see. If left unchecked, the
ANTZ will see the entire EU become one massive police state (some may argue it
is already dangerously close to being that).

Finally, what about eCigarettes themselves ?

Toward the end of 2014, we saw the launch of what is probably the 4th Generation evolution of the eCigarette. This is something that could never have
been achieved if eCigarettes were already regulated in the way the TPD seeks to
do. It is this very innovation that is driving the eCigarette industry forward
with ever increasing momentum. With the release of Evolv’s rDNA40 chip, we now
finally have a means of controlling the temperatures of eCig coils. This
removes one of the big obstacles that the ANTZ were trying to use against us in
2014. With temperature control, it will be impossible to push an eCigarette to
the temperatures that are said to produce any dangerous by-product
(notwithstanding the fact that no vaper would ever go to such temperatures
anyway as it would produce a nasty burnt taste).

However, with the ever increasing rate of innovation in eCigarette
Technology, it wouldn’t surprise me if we were to be talking about Generation 5
devices before the end of 2015 is reached. What would a Gen 5 device look like
? The answer to that is ‘How far can your imagination take you ?’

Whilst it was said that eCigarettes sales plateau’ed during 2014, personally
I did not see much evidence of this. At the start of 2014, it was still quite
rare to see an eCigarette being used ‘in the wild’. As 2014 closed, I was aware
of ever increasing numbers of people I could spot in all walks of life and
environments happily vaping away on some device or other. From how busy I have
noted the local bricks and mortar shops to be in the run-up to Christmas, I expect
to see eCigarettes becoming even more commonplace in 2015.

Also of interest to
me was how few ‘cigalikes’ I was actually seeing about the place by the close
of 2014. Big Tobacco may have invested heavily in buying the independent
cigalike companies up in an effort to control the eCigarette market. But they
have got it badly wrong in my opinion, and backed the wrong horse. People are
increasingly going directly to Gen 2 (and sometime even Gen 3) devices and
ignoring the cigalike market. Of course, there is nothing to stop Big Tobacco
from trying again and buying up the independent Gen 2 Vendors/Manufacturers, but the current
situation means that we can still assert with considerable ease that Big
Tobacco is very much a minor player in the eCigarette marketplace and I would
even argue that what presence they do maintain in the eCigarette Marketplace is
rapidly dwindling.

So, in summary, we have two areas to watch in 2015. The first is the
regulatory side of things and whether they manage to force through strict
regulation (which I doubt), and secondly the really interesting part will be the
speed of innovation and evolution of eCigarette Technology. I strongly suspect
that the Technology is moving much too fast for the Regulatory side of things to
keep up with. Innovation and evolution is going to be our greatest ally. Long may it
continue.

About Me

I was born in Wales way back in the year of 1963. I am bilingual - fluent in both Welsh and English - but can also lay claim to having some limited conversational abilities in French, Dutch and German.
My favourite sport is Rugby Union, which I played for more than 30 years until forced to retire due to injury. Consequently, I am a bit bigger than your average guy in that I am 6 foot tall and currently weigh 170lbs.
I am an accomplished musician having played in several brass bands and orchestras, therefore I can play a multitude of musical instruments.